The Ultimate Gluten and Dairy Free Lemon Layer Cake

I admit it, I am a cookbook and cooking magazine junkie, but I can stop any time I want to.

One of my favorites is Cook’s Illustrated. The photos, the sketches, the tasty food. And I completely get the obsessionmind-set that would cause someone to make 40 chickens until they found the perfect Lemon Chicken recipe. But in my quest to not pick up more magazines (I could go to the library and check it out there, after all), I try to hold off until the “Best Recipes” edition of the year. Then, that puppy is MINE!!

Okay, okay, just like my hubby you are probably saying, “What about the gluten? What about the dairy?” First, I would so rather alter a recipe for my starting point that someone worked really hard to make as perfection. The spice balance is all there and, frankly, not everything in the would has gluten or dairy, so no worries. The Ultimate Lemon Layer Cake (on the cover) is a case in point. With the lemon curd (Yum!) I simply substituted the butter for Earth Balance and the icing was already GFCF, though I did change the corn syrup to agave (corn syrup is not my favorite ingredient). Reading what they were trying to accomplish with this recipe, I used a more spongy-type of gluten free cake recipe and altered that to get the lemon flavor throughout. Super! (You could use a gluten free cake mix as you starting point, add lemon zest to the batter, bake and follow the rest of the recipe if you wanted to cut out some of the steps.) The lemon curd and icing are both keepers. I like that the icing isn’t quite as stiff and over-sweet like seven minute frosting often is. The lemon curd, I can’t even tell you how yummy it is! I made this cake for my sister’s birthday.

If you don’t want to use a gluten free mix and would like the gluten free cake part of the recipe, the one I use is the vanilla or lemon gluten and dairy free cake in the my upcoming cake e-book. You can find it on the “Classes & E-books” page the spring of 2010.